AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF)– Terrence Jackson is the Director of Safety, Prevention, and Volunteers at Tri-Development Center of Aiken.

He gives safety presentations to youth and adult groups about child passenger safety, bicycle safety, water safety, and distracted driving.

With school being out and kids playing and having more free time, bike safety is a big issue.

“Correct. So we promote a helmet on heads program. This is the prevention of a traumatic brain injury. Even the most experienced riders you see, they’re wearing their bicycle helmets. So we promote, again, this program to stress the importance of again, wearing a properly fitting bicycle helmet.”

Here’s a tip– the chin strap has to be tight.

“When you adjust your chin strap, you want it so that it is underneath your chin, and if you open your mouth, that you feel the tightness on your head. That just gives you a level of tightness, you know, that is secure enough, if you were to fall off your bike, the helmet will serve its purpose and protect you from a traumatic brain injury.”

Another safety focus for Jackson is driving.

“We started a distracted drivers program when I took over this role a few years ago, my direct supervisor said, make it your own. Promote something that you’re passionate about. So having a teenage son is gonna wanna be driving soon. I thought about a distracted driving program. And so in thinking more about it, I’d say, how to keep kids attention? Number one thing is a video game. So I found a company that again, offers this distracted drivers program. It’s called One Simple Decision. And so what the program does, it shows you the real life consequences of your driving actions.”

Jackson is also an advocate of proper child safety seat installation, as he demonstrates:

“The most important thing is being able to install the car seat correctly, knowing what direction you should put the car seat. So again, we are gonna install this one forward facing for demonstration purposes. So you have two separate belt paths, depending upon what direction you want to install it. So this is your forward facing belt path here and underneath here is if you were to install this seat rear facing. Car seats are based off of height and weight restrictions. So all carseats have a different height and weight rating given by the manufacturer of the car seat. So you’ve fed your seatbelt through the correct belt path and you’ve connect, you’ve locked it into your lock over here. One thing that you wanna do is you wanna pull your seatbelt out all the way. What that does, that activates the locking mechanism and you retract. It’s really tight. You don’t want to have more, no more than a half inch or inch of movement, so this is too much movement in this seat. So what you do is you push down on the seat and tighten the strap, to take that slack out.

“Now, when you are harnessing your child in the seat, you have your webbing. This is a five point harness where again, it connects at the crotch area and your chest clip. So what you wanna do is first you wanna make sure that you have your straps okay, at the right setting. So forward facing child, you want your straps at or below their shoulders. And a common question I have from parents is how do I get my child to keep from wiggling out of the seat correctly? I’ve heard it the whole time I’ve been doing this as a certified technician. And my answer is if you tighten the straps tight enough, they not have the room to maneuver their arms out of the straps.”